August 4
The silence of the night was broken by upbeat flamboyant singing. Loud and boisterous, the annual performance was part of the ongoing Hungry Ghost festival celebration by the chinese community of Taoist and Buddhist faiths around our residential area. The seventh month of the chinese lunar calendar is also known as the Ghost Month, in which ghosts and spirits are believed to travel to world of the living from the lower realm.
Part of the street is cordoned off, making space for a temporary performance stage and an altar, which is filled with food offerings such as pink and off-white wheat buns, fruits, dishes, candles, joss sticks, joss papers, as well as deities and material offerings such as clothes,shoes, gold bars made of paper to please the visiting spirits.
The area is filled with smoke, especially at night from the constant, profuse burning of joss sticks, joss papers and incense till the 13th day, when the realm of heaven, hades and of the living are believed to open. The living would perform ritualistic offerings to transmute and absolve the suffering the those that had gone to the lower realm.
I wonder if I would get a visit this year from my beloved grandfather, who passed away almost 12 years ago. I was in my first year of university and was two week shy of my first semester break at the end of August. Earlier that year I was working part time in Resorts World, and I never saw him for Chinese New Year. I returned to KL to send in my application for a placement in local universities, and whilst I waited for the good news, I worked in an engineering firm.
Four years earlier, after his 81st birthday, he was diagnosed with renal failure, and had to undergo dialysis twice a week in Ipoh. I was in sixth form. The mornings he was to have his dialysis, I would dutifully prepare his breakfast, make his milo and pack bread for his late morning tea after the sessions ended.
Within the first three months after his demise, I had the same dream of him for three consecutive days. He'd not failed to pay me a visit in my dreams each year; either near Qing Ming (paying homage to ancestors) or during the seventh month. Perhaps he had missed his granddaughter. He was a dotting grandfather. Or maybe it was me who had missed him and had been carrying the guilt of not able to say my last goodbye. Perhaps a goodbye is not needed, for I carry the memories of him in me.
The silence of the night was broken by upbeat flamboyant singing. Loud and boisterous, the annual performance was part of the ongoing Hungry Ghost festival celebration by the chinese community of Taoist and Buddhist faiths around our residential area. The seventh month of the chinese lunar calendar is also known as the Ghost Month, in which ghosts and spirits are believed to travel to world of the living from the lower realm.
Part of the street is cordoned off, making space for a temporary performance stage and an altar, which is filled with food offerings such as pink and off-white wheat buns, fruits, dishes, candles, joss sticks, joss papers, as well as deities and material offerings such as clothes,shoes, gold bars made of paper to please the visiting spirits.
The area is filled with smoke, especially at night from the constant, profuse burning of joss sticks, joss papers and incense till the 13th day, when the realm of heaven, hades and of the living are believed to open. The living would perform ritualistic offerings to transmute and absolve the suffering the those that had gone to the lower realm.
I wonder if I would get a visit this year from my beloved grandfather, who passed away almost 12 years ago. I was in my first year of university and was two week shy of my first semester break at the end of August. Earlier that year I was working part time in Resorts World, and I never saw him for Chinese New Year. I returned to KL to send in my application for a placement in local universities, and whilst I waited for the good news, I worked in an engineering firm.
Four years earlier, after his 81st birthday, he was diagnosed with renal failure, and had to undergo dialysis twice a week in Ipoh. I was in sixth form. The mornings he was to have his dialysis, I would dutifully prepare his breakfast, make his milo and pack bread for his late morning tea after the sessions ended.
Within the first three months after his demise, I had the same dream of him for three consecutive days. He'd not failed to pay me a visit in my dreams each year; either near Qing Ming (paying homage to ancestors) or during the seventh month. Perhaps he had missed his granddaughter. He was a dotting grandfather. Or maybe it was me who had missed him and had been carrying the guilt of not able to say my last goodbye. Perhaps a goodbye is not needed, for I carry the memories of him in me.
1 comment:
Cheryl,
i'd recommend Sigmund Freud, u can read about his analysis of dreams.
nic
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